


Steady air

by Lleu



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6029404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleu/pseuds/Lleu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>                    dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Of the rolling level underneath him steady air</i>
</p>
<p>Wirt is fifteen and gay, and he thinks he might be in love with the boy who wears the mascot costume at their high school’s football games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady air

**Author's Note:**

> Title and epigram from Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "The Windhover". Other poems used in the fic (all by GMH), in order: "I wake and feel the fell of dark...", "No worst, there is none...", "My own heart let me more have pity on...", "Brothers", ("My own heart let me more have pity on..." again,) "Hurrahing in Harvest", "(Carrion Comfort)", ("Hurrahing in Harvest" again).

Wirt is thirteen the first time he reads a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, in some anthology or other. It’s one of what he later learns are called the “sonnets of desolation”, and as he writes in the journal he’s experimenting with keeping (which he will soon abandon and, much later, rediscover with a mix of bemusement and chagrin), _it speaks to my soul_.

> _I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day._  
>  _What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent_  
>  _This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!_  
>  _And more must, in yet longer light’s delay._

Wirt is fourteen when he finds a copy of Hopkins’s complete works in a used bookstore. He reads it from cover to cover, even puzzling through some of the Latin compositions and translations with a dictionary from the school library. He sleeps with it under his pillow. He knows the feel of each individual page, and he knows exactly where to stop when flipping through the book to get to each of his favorites.

Some of the more esoteric religious stuff goes over his head, he will admit, but there’s such genuine _feeling_ in the poems, especially the later sonnets. And it’s feeling Wirt can understand.

> _Here! creep,  
>  Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all  
>  Life death does end and each day dies with sleep._

It’s the beginning of high school, and Wirt spends most of his time outside of school curled up in his bed reading poetry and doing his best to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

“ _call off thoughts a while / Elsewhere_ ,” he tries, unconvincingly, to tell himself, but as he buries himself in poems and practicing the clarinet, his thoughts keep returning, instead, to “ _wrung all on love’s rack, / My lad, and lost in Jack, / Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip_ ”, and to the smile on Sam’s face when he said “hey, Wirt” that morning as they were at their lockers.

> _whose smile  
>  ’s not wrong, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies  
>  Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile._

Wirt is fifteen and gay, and he thinks he might be in love with the boy who wears the mascot costume at their high school’s football games. And sometimes, just for a moment or two here and there, he thinks Sam might feel something like the same thing.

It’s not much to go on, objectively, — a smile, a pause, a laugh — but it’s what he’s got, so he makes the best of it. He circles around at the edge of Sam’s friend group, never quite bold enough (“ _the heart rears wings bold and bolder_ ,” he says to himself, but somehow the following “ _And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet_ ” is less than encouraging) to step into it.

He spends a lot of time lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and screaming internally (and sometimes externally) in frustration — at a lot of things, including society, his stepdad, and Greg, but mostly at himself, for being too much of a coward to do anything ever.

But then he reminds himself of all the ways everything could possibly go wrong, which on the one hand makes him feel worse but on the other hand, paradoxically, makes him feel better about his chronic inability to be a normal — a functional human being, he corrects himself. He knows he’ll never be normal.

> _Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;  
>  Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man  
>  In me ór, most weary, cry _ I can no more _._

Wirt is sixteen, and he’s picking up the mixtape he just made from the ground where he’d thrown it. He stares at the words on the label. His own handwriting. _For Sam_. He takes a deep breath, trying and failing to keep a shudder of anxiety out of it. Better just _do this_ before he loses this nerve he’s spent the last two years slowly building up.

So he puts the finishing touches on his costume, stares at himself in the mirror. Turns on the fan for effect. Nods approvingly. “Yes. YES.” He’s not sure he’s convinced himself, much less that he’ll convince anyone else, but it’ll have to do.

There’s a football game on that night. He stands at the fence at the edge of the stadium, watching Sam, in the distance, do his mascot routine. And then Greg shows up.

“I’ll give the tape to Sam _for_ you,” Greg says, and before Wirt can react he’s skipping off towards the field.

“ _Greg_!” Wirt hisses, but Greg can’t hear him. Swearing (internally) Wirt hurries after him, but it’s too late: Greg has already run into Kathleen and company.

“That’s Wirt’s tape for Sam, the mascot he’s been looking at all night!” Greg says, and everything falls silent as Kathleen, Rhondi, and that girl they’re always with whose name Wirt doesn’t actually know parse what Greg just said. Kathleen looks at the tape, then at Wirt, then back at the tape, then back at Wirt. Her eyes widen. Wirt can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“I’d...better go. We’d better go. Come on, Greg!”

Fighting the urge to scream, he grabs Greg’s hand and drags him away, far away, as fast as they can go. Away, away, away, somewhere no-one will go looking for them, somewhere Wirt can hide and no-one will ever find him.

Which is how they end up in the graveyard, Wirt cowering behind a headstone, face buried in his hands, and Greg wandering around in pursuit of the frog he claims to hear.

He doesn’t know how long they’re there, but suddenly there are voices — voices he recognizes — and one of them is Sam: “Hey, isn’t that Wirt’s little brother?”

Wirt crouches lower. Maybe if he tries hard enough he can become invisible.

“Hey, little guy,” Sam says. “Is Wirt here?”

And then to Wirt’s horror, Greg’s voice: “Yeah, he’s right over there.”

Wirt jumps up, then. Maybe Kathleen _won’t_ have told Sam. Maybe he can salvage the situation, fake his way out of this (who’s he kidding, he’s a terrible liar and always has been). “Hey, Sam; hey, guys,” he says, as cheerfully as he can manage. It sounds painfully forced, even to him; he winces. “What...what are you all doing here?”

Before anyone can answer, they’re interrupted by the police, and then they’ve all scattered, running every which way; Wirt grabs Greg and they run down the path until they hit a wall. Panicking, Wirt sees the tree and scrambles up it until he’s balanced on the top of the wall. He looks back and sees Sam and Jason Funderburker standing behind one of the headstones. Sam has a cassette in his hand: “I don’t know,” he says to Jason. “It just has my name on it.”

“Let’s go listen to it,” Jason says with a laugh.

_They know_ , Wirt thinks. _He knows. Sam knows._

“Kids, get down from there before you get hurt!” the policeman yells, but Wirt shakes his head.

“Come on, Greg,” he says, and then they jump down on the other side.

Now, with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he has the energy to be angry at Greg (who, predictably, ignores all of the _totally legitimate_ reasons that Wirt is angry and scared and frustrated in favor of continuing his _frog hunt_ ), but then there’s a train, and then they’re falling down the hill, and then —

> _I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes_

Wirt opens his eyes to a white ceiling and electric lights and Sam’s face leaning over him. This isn’t the Unknown. “Where...where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital,” Sam says.

“Greg! Where’s Greg?” he sits up quickly and looks around. Greg is in the center of a circle of other kids from Wirt’s school, expounding at length on something or other.

“And then — Wirt! I was just telling them about the time we almost got—” and then the frog interrupts, and they all laugh.

And then Sam says, quietly, as the others turn back to whatever Greg was telling them, “Hey, so, uh...about this...” He holds out the tape.

Wirt feels himself turn bright red. “Uh...”

“Kathleen said you...uh...made it...for me, but...yeah...so...I don’t have a tape player,” Sam says, looking embarrassed, “so...”

“Uh, yeah...” Wirt says, and he feels surprisingly calm considering this is the end of everything he’s hoped for these last few years.

“So...maybe we can listen to it...?” Sam starts to say, and it takes Wirt a second to process what he’s suggesting. Then he grins.

“We can listen to it at my house,” he says, “yes.” And he feels like he could walk on air. Then he starts second guessing himself. “Maybe we should listen to some other tapes first, though. This one’s a little bit...uh...I mean, you can listen to it...”

Wirt trails off. Sam is smiling, so Wirt smiles hesitantly back.

“You pick the tape; I’ll listen,” Sam says. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Wirt says.

Maybe this isn’t the end of the world after all.


End file.
